American Exceptionalism

American Exceptionalism

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they have tried everything else.”
- Winston Churchill

By J.M. Hamilton  (3-1-15)

The GOP, minions of the plutocracy, has had a lock on U.S. politics for the last thirty-five years.  Its domestic and foreign policy of trickle-down economics and endless war, respectively, aside from enriching the plutocracy to the near exclusion of everyone else, have been abject failures.  The Republican Party holds the majority of state legislative bodies and governor’s mansions, and in state after state, we see deficit spending, broken state budgets, failing infrastructure, credit rating cuts, and social services cut to the bone.  If Demos are tax and spend, Republicans are borrow and spend, and the latter – to this fiscal conservative – is considerably worse.  There are many apologist for debt, but all one has to do is look to the Southern periphery nations of Europe to realize that not only does debt rob our children of their futurity, but it makes nation states slaves to unsavory masters, such as the international banking cartel, the ECB, the IMF, and/or in this country, the Fed’s printing press (and politicians owned by same).

The Republican Party is the bastion of the angry white male, and while I am on very rare occasion “angry,” and inescapably both white and male, like the majority of Americans, I recognize the GOP as a political party in decline.  This party has no solutions, cannot govern, is retrograde, racist, and about as far removed from Christian values as Satan.  It is fighting a rearguard action against the future and history.  Even The Party recognizes its future in President Obama’s rising poll numbers; and barring significant change, led by tolerant/libertarian leaders like Rand Paul, the GOP finds itself staring into the abyss. 

Aside from the ideology of freedom espoused by Mr. Paul, the only thing the GOP can count on these days is the Democratic Party’s inexplicable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, when Dems do not hold true to protecting the middle-class from the, all too often, predatory 1%.

What do the angry and the daunted do when cornered, and exposed for who they are?  They lash out, and fear-monger; they are prone to misdirection and obfuscation, and ultimately, resort to demagoguery.  Who falls for such tactics (?): The fearful, the angry and the nescient.  After all, nobody really likes change, particularly the rich and the powerful (who benefit most from the status quo); and the wealthy and the powerful have had their way with Lady Liberty, at the expense of the 99%, for a very long time. 

The remedy for such tactics is: activism, education, enlightenment, and exposing the fear peddlers and the exploiters to the sanitizing light of day.

Two recent examples of the Party of Fear, and the Party of Dumbed Down Madness, were on full display in the last couple of weeks, in the forms of former NY Mayor, Mr. Rudy Giuliani, and current Wisconsin Governor, Mr. Scott Walker.  The former embracing fear, and the latter endorsing ignorance.

American exceptionalism, like many things politic, is subject to a duality:  On one side of the coin, we have the light, brilliance, and the promise/gift of our founding father’s legacy, the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution (these documents state that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are sacrosanct); the dark side or the flip side of that same American exceptionalism coin is the reality, or practice, that our founder’s promise and gift has been withheld from many folks, who are not “lily white,” wealthy, or part of America’s aristocracy.

The dark side of American exceptionalism (the betrayal of the American dream for many persons of color) has been used to justify all manner of atrocities:  from slavery, which was with us from the nation’s founding through the civil war; to manifest destiny, which was the doctrine of nationalist expansion, and racial purity – made manifest in Native-American subjugation and slaughter (Some have even argued that Germany’s National Socialist, or Nazi Party, gained it’s expansionist aims and racial purity laws directly from America’s policy of manifest destiny.  In Germany this policy was called: Lebensraum ).  The dark side of American exceptionalism includes 150-plus years of Jim Crow, the vestiges of which are with us to this very day, in our overcrowded jails, prisons and the criminal justice industrial complex.  U.S. exceptionalism took our founder’s benign mercantilist and agrarian economy and perverted them – in the name of untrammeled greed -  into monstrosities like:  The Wall Street banking cartel, which in 2008, nearly destroyed the American economy; monopolies and cartels, like Booze Allen, which runs the ubiquitous and uber-powerful spy network, The N.S.A.; Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto, who hold incredible sway over the nation’s food supply and who have crushed the Jeffersonian dream; and of course, a bellicose and belligerent foreign policy, represented by the military industrial complex and the private contractors, who own, operate, and make up same.

For the last 35 years, the GOP has turned President Kennedy’s pledge on its head, from:  “… we shall pay any price, bear any burden, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” and converted it to:

… we shall pay any price, bear any burden, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of multi-national and commercial profits, globally.

This is the version of American exceptionalism that Mr. Giuliani recently defended, when he accused President Obama of not loving present day, America.  (To be sure, not all of America’s historical atrocities can be laid at the GOP's doorstep, but unfortunately, the Republican Party has become the standard barrier of many this nation’s past, explicit and tacit, racial and racist policies, from Nixon’s Southern Strategy to Mr. Romney’s comments on the parasitic 47%.)

Mr. Giuliani's America is perennially at war with the world, with the goal of unlimited commercial conquest.  Mr. Giuliani’s America is far, far removed from our founding fathers' intent and promise: that all men are created equal.  We get the following quotes from Mr. Giuliani from the Washington Post:

“He (President Obama) doesn’t love you.  And he doesn’t love me.  He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up though love of this country.”

“… with all the flaws we’re the most exceptional country in the world.  I’m looking for a presidential candidate who can express that, do that and carry it out.”

“And if that’s you Scott (Walker), I’ll endorse you.”

“(Obama) sees our weakness as footnotes to the great things we’ve done.”

“I’m not sure how wrong the (Christian) crusades were.”

Then last week, Giuliani compared Obama to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying “that is a patriot, that’s a man who loves his people, that’s a man who protects his people, that’s a man who fights for his people, unlike our President.”

Unfortunately, for Mr. Giuliani and the neo-conmen, who make up the Republican Party, their time is very short.  They believe in a version of America that will be gone in the next twenty to thirty years, and not a moment too soon.  Demographic trends are such that the GOP will be forced to change, or they will simply vanish.   With the advent of Elizabeth’s Warren’s message of economic enfranchisement for all classes and economic pluralism, and Mr. Paul’s message of a less adventurist foreign policy, the GOP establishment is being threatened like never before.  Hence, lashing out like a wounded plutocrat…. Mr. Giuliani, undoubtedly, had the audacity to say what many Republicans have been thinking, and saying behind closed doors, for some time.  The GOP has had a good run for the last 35 years, but their policies have ruined this country.  President Reagan’s quip immediately comes to mind: “Ask yourself, are you better off today than you were four years ago?”  Now, apply the Reagan maxim to 35 years of Republican rule, which includes an ever shrinking middleclass, the off-shoring and globalization of labor markets, stagnating U.S. wages, war without end, and the answer is the GOP has taken a wrecking ball to everything that made this country great….all for personal enrichment.

 It’s only natural that The Party, and King Giuliani, and the people who benefited most from the dark side of American exceptionalism, cry out for its continuance.

Winston Churchill, his mother was American, once said: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they have tried everything else.”

American exceptionalism is not Mr. Guiliani’s version of America; American exceptionalism is taking our founding father’s promise and advancing it up the field, so that it applies to all persons in this country, regardless of race, color, creed, faith, sex, sexual orientation, or age.  American exceptionalism is an evolutionary process, where we learn from past mistakes, and slay our demons: whether it be slavery and Jim Crow, or economically and politically enfranchising women.  The evolutionary process is slow, but it is steady (despite the GOP's best efforts to contain it); it is inexorable, and forever on the march.  We can see it in Apple CEO, Tim Cook speaking out for internet privacy rights.  We can see it in the national acceptance of LBGTQ rights; we see it in President Obama obtaining the highest office in the land, and in his rising poll numbers.  But we have, indeed, a long way to go.  America and Americans should settle for nothing less, than steady continuous progress for a more culturally, socially, politically and economically tolerant and just society.

Applying whitewash to the past is not the answer…. The greatness of America is in embracing our history, and the truth, and learning from past mistakes, so that the nation can continue to evolve, to better achieve our founder’s ideals for everyone.  While we can question our past, we should all celebrate the progress America has made and will continue to make, with or without the GOP.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2015